Week 6 - Rehearsals

Hi everyone it is my turn to write the blog this week. So we have come to the final rehearsal week in six weeks. Oh yeah... its Mathew Chambers by the way I'm back again, and it feels like home being back with 2Faced Dance Company. (Sorry i always forget to introduce myself Lol.) But anyway let's get back to the juicy gossip.

Sixth week: Everyone is getting tired and every muscle in the body is hurting so we are on edge a little. We have learnt two pieces of work one with Tom Dale and the other with The Big Boss Lady (Tamsin Fitzgerald) so there is a lot going on upstairs. PS the dance studios smell amazingly fresh hehehehe NOT...... (8 boys smell like hard work and f**t)

But we are all keeping focused and working our behinds off (and drinking a lot of coffee). Because we all want the best work possible for all you guys to enjoy and be mesmerised by in this AMAZING In The Dust Triple Bill of dance.

I cannot express enough how excited I am to get on the road and perform these three pieces for everyone to see. 2011 is going to be an amazing year for 2Faced Dance Company.

You guys are going to be blown away!

So book your tickets for the world premiere of In The Dust Triple Bill coming to Edinburgh in August.

Peace and Love love love

Matt Chambers x

Week 4 & 5 - Rehearsals

The fourth week of June was kind of full on for everybody at 2Faced Dance Company and for the hr1 project.  The Courtyard Arts Centre was inundated all week by no less than 400 dance students each night.  Children, teenagers, the youth company and the professional company, performed at FRESH (the only schools platform in Herefordshire) and DETONATE, 2Faced Dance Company's annual show featuring performers from 2Faced Dance Company’s community classes.  It's an understatement to say that it was a little bit crazy, but it all went very well, with parents, friends and patrons of the Courtyard coming along to support the performances and the work of the next generation of dancers.

 The Main Company had the chance to perform a short extract of each piece of our current production, In The Dust (triple bill), at the end of each night.  It was really exciting and refreshing to perform the work on stage in front of an audience after having worked only in the studio rehearsing for the last couple of months.  I, personally, was really impressed by the work, the skills and the commitment of 2Faced Youth Company. I thought they performed brilliantly and with *gusto.*

 On Tuesday, we had fun performing an extract from 7.0 choreographed by Tamsin Fitzgerald, which is one of the works featured in the In the Dust triple bill, for the West Midlands Business Awards that took place at the Town Hall in Birmingham..

 Back to the hr1 project this week for the launch of the project at the Castle House Hotel followed by Saturday’s danceMash day in Hereford. I got to dance a funny duet with Luke Jessop on a platform at the train station and we joined a big flash mob in High Town as well as performing an extract from In the Dust twice in the High Town outdoor showcases.  It was fantastic to see so many Herefordians enjoying dance and participating in the Flash Mob. 

*to sum up: a busy, fun and exciting week.*

Bisous

Johnny

Week 3 - Rehearsals

This week in rehearsals we have really got into the meaning of the piece and spent a lot of time improvising to the score Tom has had created to find our own journey through the piece.

We began by listening to the music and writing down words that came to mind to describe the feeling it evoked. With these words, we then created a short story and then with this story in mind began to improvise to the music. This produced some really interesting movement and pathways that would have been impossible to create by directly choreographing the movement, and also allowed us as dancers to understand and become immersed in the atmosphere of the piece that Tom is creating.

As a company we are all getting to know each other better, and a real sense of friendship and trust is being established. Can’t wait to be performing with all these guys!

Hugh Stanier ( Hobbit Shire Monkey)

Week 2 - Rehearsals

My second week with the company was just as enjoyable as the first. It has been great working with an all male group who posses such enthusiasm for extreme physicality. This week Tom continued to generate movement phrases and gave us more time to develop various creative tasks and improvisation scores based on his ideas. While doing this he also began to roughly structure and connect the small sections we had created together. This enabled us to grasp a better feel for the overall journey and form the piece might take; and in turn allowed us to delve deeper into some of his ideas while creating solos etc. We all continued to work hard to embody Tom's unique movement language, and in doing so we also found interesting and effective ways of bringing our own strengths and styles into the work. I found this aspect really exciting as we all have different dance backgrounds and experiences, and have been seizing the opportunity to share and develop our skills with each other. As an outsider I felt very welcomed into the working environment because of this.

Week 1 - Rehearsals

Hello, It's Luke here. I'm one of the newbies to the company and I've been asked to write about our first week of rehearsals. Joining 2Faced Dance Company has been great fun! It's been amazing to work with so many talented and unique guys aswell as just making some great new friends. For our first week of rehearsals we've been working with Tom Dale, which has been awesome! He has a real unique quality to his movement which is both hard and flowing so it's a nice challenge to try and get the movement. We worked on some phrases that Tom taught aswell creating some of our own material. It's really fun to work with a mix of bboys, contemporary and ballet dancers. It's a real nice vibe which I've never experienced before. I think we're all really excited about the project, this is my first real professional contract as I'm currently just finishing off my degree, so I know I'm definitely one of most excitable ones! So far, with Tom's piece we're still just playing around with ideas at the moment but it's shaping up to look pretty damn cool! We start everyday with a nice warm up (including a 15min tennis-ball self massage...good times!!) and then move on to some exercises which are sometimes used as material and sometimes just to help us get Tom's style of movement in our bodies. Then after lunch we crack on with some choreography. Overall it's been a great week, and I'm looking forward to many more! Luke :-)